'Amazing Race' recap: Rolling alpine cheeses

Jackie Burrell, San Jose Mercury News

Published
12:00 am EDT, Monday, April 15, 2013

Welcome back, Amazing watchers! Six teams remain in the "Amazing Race" global sprint for a million buckaroos. The hockey bros, country singers, uber-annoying newlyweds, roller derby moms, You Tube hosts and Mr. & Mrs. Mullet (Chuck and Wynona) are bound for Switzerland and the small, snowy alpine town of Grindelwald.

The teams wait outside a church in the early morning light as a shepherd, bearing yellow clue envelopes, slides up via a really cool sled thing. They're instructed to take a train to the Kleine Scheidegg at the base of the Eiger and collect rescue dogs, St. Bernards with the classic little barrel attached to their collars.

Chuck and Wynona are already bickering over Chuck's motivational style and they haven't encountered any icy challenges yet. He thinks "egging her on" helps. She begs to differ: "You would think that after 24 years that isn't egging me on, it's pissing me off." They're both getting on our last nerve.

"Teams must now travel by train with their new BFFs to Europe's highest rail station, built 11,000 feet above sea level," Phil tells us, snuggling up with an adorable dog. The teams must deliver their rescue dogs at the top of the mountain. Wynona gripes that Chuck is treating the dog better than her. He retorts that the dog runs faster. Wow.

Roadblock

Now, from a tiny station perched precariously on the itty bitty tip of a crag, one member of each team must climb out an observation window on the north face of Eiger and inch across a sheer rock wall, thousands of feet in the air, and reach a gnome -- yes, a product placement gnome -- with the next clue written on his feet. Wynona, dizzy from the altitude, has only done three roadblocks, Chuck has done five, so she opts to do the task. This does not bode well.

Bates heads out on a two-by-four, harnessed to the Eiger face via ropes and carabiners. It looks pretty straightforward, other than the intensely vertical spectacle of certain death. "I never looked down the whole time," country singer Jen says as she completes the task in minutes. That seems like a vastly preferable strategy to Wynona's, which consists of a steady "I can't do it! I can't do it!" wail. The marital bickering resumes as soon as she returns to the safety of the observation deck.

Next up: 50-pound wheels of cheese! OMG, best challenge in Amazing Race history and they're not only doing it again, they've added sleds, snow and a hill so steep, there's a rope to haul oneself up. Newlywed Katie is at the front of the line, falling again and again and again. Just getting up the hill is proving a major problem, even before the fromage gets involved.

The hockey bros get up the hill first and they've figured out a great system: "Letting the cheese push us down the hill." Katie nearly gets buried by her cheese, but everyone manages pretty well and the first four teams complete the task fairly quickly. Chuck and Wynona and the YouTubers run into them as they approach the cheese arena.

Wynona struggles on the snowy hill, as Chuck grouses in his usual charmless style, telling his wife, "I can't do both these sleds and your ass." At the top of the hill he says, "Catch your breath and get some brains back. You sucked on this hill." They have managed to make the previously-loathsome newlyweds look like Mr. and Mrs. Congeniality.

At the pit stop, Bodmi Snowboard and Ski School, the hockey boys are team number one again -- winning a trip for two to Bora Bora. Roller derbies Mona and Beth are team two. The newlyweds are held up by a cow traffic jam, but they still arrive in third place and do a happy dance on the pit stop mat. Country singers Caroline and Jennifer are team four, and unless the YouTubers do something really dumb and get lost, they'll be in fifth place.

Oh no. Seriously?

Chuck and Wynona have somehow arrived first. The good news? They didn't transport the cheeses properly and have incurred a 30 minutes penalty. We are now shrieking at the TV as Megan and Joey straggle up slowwwwly -- whew, they come in fifth place and Chuck and Wynona are out at last.

Next time: Screaming descents down skyscraper exteriors and weird labyrinths. See you then!